Book of Joshua

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rben20

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Hello Catholics,

I’ve been reading a lot of the Old Testament lately and I’ve come to question some events I don’t quite understand. Why is it that in the Book of Joshua, Jesue is asked to take two cities, Jericho and Hia by force and bloodshed. I’m not sure why God would want to destroy the cities and kill everyone in the cities. The bible even states women and children were not spared. What for? I just don’t understand the violence.
 
As you read Joshua, notice that it’s more like a religious ceremony for the people rather than a war. They purify themselves, have a circumcision party to get everyone up-to-snuff, and parade with priests and shofars. What’s going on, is this is God’s war, not the people’s. God promised the land, and God will deliver it to them. He leads them across the Jordan, he destroys the wall of Jericho, he delivers it up to them. And when God has won the battle, He gets the spoils as victor. How do you give things to God? You kill or burn them. All the people have to do is be holy and obedient.

As long as they do this, things go well. But when they don’t - when someone keeps some of the spoils, or they start talking truces with Canaanite kings - then the wheels come off. Then they are acting under their own will, as if it’s their war and not God’s. And when they fail to trust God, they suffer consequences.

That’s not to say that all this isn’t offensive to us. It is. It doesn’t sit quite right. It doesn’t sound like the merciful God of all peoples that we’ve come to expect. However, this was a unique and pivotal moment in Israel’s history. This was the delivery of the promised land which they’d struggled toward for centuries. This was the time for God to make good on His promise. And God delivers the goods.

Where we get into trouble is when we try to generalize this into guidance for us today. Some use this as justification for ruthless holy war today. But that’s usually just another example of people acting out of their own will and blaming it on God, which will get them into as much trouble as it did the ancient Israelites when they failed to trust God.
 
As I see it, God has two hands - one of mercy and one of justice. Let’s look back to Genesis 19 and following for a similar tale. It is fairly obvious that there were at least some children in both Sodom and Gomorrah, yet those cities were incinerated. This is an example of God’s justice, due to their lack of repentance and the depth of their sin, which cried out to heaven for justice. Remember that, explicit in the old covenant, sins attached to descendants to the seventh generation. But, what of the children? Since all creation belongs to God, He does with it as He wishes. He is infinite and the limited human mind is simply incapable of fathoming the profound mystery that is our Lord. It is when we place the beliefs and values of man upon God that we become confused. God is absolutely inscrutable.
 
To add to Mr Akins explanation, God had just worked great miracles to free the Hebrews from the injustice of slavery. How would it be if those same miracles were to bring about the enslavement of another nation?

God didn’t want to force another nation into slavery.:twocents:
 
Maybe God wants to cut down some branches that sick and mangled to allow the opportunity for more fruitful and good vines to grow.
 
The people of Jericho were not operating in a vacuum. They saw what was going with Israel and had heard of the great things God had done for them, that God had released them from Egypt, parted the sea, fed them in the desert and blocked up the Jordan River. Now those same Israelites were standing outside of their city and the residents of Jericho did not acquiesce.

These were not innocent people. Their worship of the god Baal included homosexual clut prostitution and orgies. They sacrificed their own children to the god Molech. Molech was a great statue with outstretched arms full of red hot coals into which they placed their own children while still alive as sacrifice. It wasn’t like these people were just standing there minding their own business and God decided to kill them for no good reason. The nations who inhabited the land of Cannan were extemely harsh people who engaged in gruesom practices.

Take Pharoah as an example. God had given them a plague of frogs where the frogs went into the beds of the Egyptians. Most people don’t realize that the frog was the Egyptian God of fertility. When all the frogs died in the bedrooms and beds of the egyptians, you think they would have figured out that the God of Israel was the real God? Nope. Beelzebub was their fly god, the god of the air and God gave them a plageu of flies. Aman-Re was their sun god and the God of Israel gave them darkness.

For all these people, it wasn’t like they weren’t warned. Yet they did not repent in the face of God’s chosen one, Israel.

And that Old Testament God is the same God we worship now. I wonder how long it will be before the same God takes us to task for sacrificing 1.5 million unborn every year in the US alone to the gods of convenience and sexual freedom.

-Tim-
 
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